The stench of garbage in Beirut had become so overwhelming that residents of the Lebanese city were compelled to protest last weekend, taking to the streets to demand that city officials double-down on trash collection efforts. Demonstrators even blocked a road leading to South Lebanon, chanting, “You stink!” as they marched.

It’s unclear whether the slogan was a reference to the garbage or a jab at Lebanon’s political officials, who have been struggling to find a solution to the trash situation after a major landfill closed down on July 17th. Residents had been complaining about the dump for over a year now, arguing that it had been filled to overcapacity. But after the landfill was closed, the city’s largest waste collector, Sukleen, has had trouble finding a place to put all the garbage, and has ceased operations until they find an alternate solution.

According to Al Jazeera English, the trash piles have grown to several feet tall, as they lay untouched by collectors for more than a week now, and the smell has become impossible to bear.

"We are literally knee-deep in shit," said Hassan Ali, a Beirut resident, to AJE. "You can't sit outside any more, because the smell wafts around you, and wherever you walk you're tripping over garbage."

Some residents have attempted to burn their garbage. Others have taken to wearing gas masks around the city. Prime Minister Taman Salam has threatened to resign over the crisis. Fortunately, reports that Sukleen had resumed collecting some of the trash emerged on Sunday, and some photos on social media confirmed the story.

A lot has changed since Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary first scaled the freezing peaks of Mount Everest in 1953. For one thing, attempting to summit Everest, though still perilous, has become a sort of rite of passage for X-treme yuppie adventurer types. More than 4,000 people have now climbed the mountain. As a result of this growing tourist popularity, Everest has also become covered in garbage and human poop (the most dangerous of all the poops). As GOOD’s Tasbeeh Herwees put it earlier this month, “For every moneyed thrill-seeker who thinks climbing Mount Everest is a novel post-college adventure, there is a mound of human waste sitting on top of the mountain to account for their privilege.” And fecal matter is just the tip of the shit pile; the Himalayan mountain is covered with the strewn trash of expeditions past, including, according to the Daily Mail India, “tents, sleeping bags, oxygen cylinders, and even the corpses of climbers who never made it down.” Now, two new cleanup efforts are underway—one an Indian army mountaineering team that aims to clean up litter, and the other a pioneering project to turn tourist dung into a source of energy.

Yesterday, the Daily Mail India reported that a 30-person team, sponsored by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, would set out for Everest’s summit, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first Indian mission to conquer the world’s highest peak. The group will take 30 days to tackle the mountain, and are tasked with bringing 4,000 kilograms (about 8,800 pounds) of garbage back down with them. “The team has been training hard for over a year for this mission,” an army source told the Daily Mail. “They have scaled other peaks in India as part of the training. On each mission, no non-biodegradable waste was left behind. This is the new standard operating procedure to scale the peaks and yet protect the environment.”

Major Ranveer Singh Jamwal, an experienced climber who has already scaled Everest twice, will lead the expedition. “Sadly, Mount Everest is now also called the world’s highest junkyard,” Major Jamwal told the Mail. “Our aim is to carry forward our prime minister’s dream of cleanliness everywhere, including at the top of the world…Apart from our own haversacks weighing 10 kg each, we intend to bring in another 10 kg each on the trip.”

But while the problem of Everest’s trash accumulation is now somewhat well known, having been the subject of several awareness campaigns, cleanup efforts, and regulatory schemes over the years, the issue of human waste still has everybody scratching their heads and holding their noses. It’s estimated that more than 26,000 pounds of excrement are left on the mountain every year. Currently, local Sherpas try to manage the problem by carrying down as much feces as possible in bags and barrels, which are then buried. But this solution is both environmentally unsound in the long term and offensive to those locals that consider the mountain a holy site.

Think Progress has the story of Garry Porter, a former Boeing engineer who has been working to build an anaerobic digester, essentially a container full of water and microorganisms that can process the poop into a source of energy, at the foot of the mountain. In the digester, a series of different bacteria break down the waste in stages, resulting in biogas fuel and byproducts that can be used as fertilizer. Though Porter first started his project more than a decade ago, a number of problems, including how to keep temperatures in the digester warm in the region’s frigid climate, have prevented it from becoming a reality. But now, with the addition of a shelter to keep the digester from the elements and a solar-powered heating element to maintain the correct temperature, Porter and his team think they’ve finally figured it out. They hope to begin construction next year, and be digesting human waste by 2017. And though funding may be tricky, Think Progress points out an appropriate solution:

One thing that’s clear is who should pay for cleaning it up: the climbers. Though Porter estimates the digester could be costly—anywhere up to $100,000, he said—an extra charge within the now-$25,000 climbing fee is a small price to pay for getting to scale the highest mountain in the world.

I’d spent my life thoughtlessly throwing trash in a garbage can, knowing trash services came to my house regularly to carry away what I didn’t want. Sure, I learned in school about landfills and recycling and I thought I was a green person. But I’d never seen my personal trash accumulate; it was just taken away, never to be seen again. I assumed it would always be this way. Then I moved to Paraguay.

For two years I lived as a volunteer in the South American country. Paraguay doesn't have government-regulated garbage pickup, or septic systems that can handle toilet paper. What to do? At first, I simply bagged my banana peels, empty juice boxes, and other secret garbage that I'd never given a second thought to in the United States, and tossed it all in the trash cans at the center of town. I assumed the government would be along shortly to empty them. The garbage trucks never came.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that disposing of my garbage in Paraguay wasn’t really disposing of it at all. I noticed an American brand can of Pringles rolling down the street, the same flavor I'd bought the week before. Then some school papers with my name on them. Then—the horror—a used tampon wrapped in toilet paper. For Paraguayans, litter is a bigger problem than excessive garbage accumulation. Candy wrappers are a regular occurrence in the street. The trash is tossed in cans loose, rarely bagged, and tends to scatter through the street as people sort through it looking for treasures.

While I scrambled around picking up my waste, I realized that garbage in Paraguay was going to be my responsibility. My trash was no longer anonymous. There’s a lesson the Western world could learn from a garbage system like Paraguay’s—that is, no system at all, only personal responsibility.

I started with toilet paper, out of necessity. A pile of used toilet paper in the 90-degree heat is not a pleasant thing. Flushing it wasn’t an option. Instead, I bought a tin bucket, punctured holes in the bottom of it for better air circulation, and a few times every week I’d march the bucket out to a field and throw a lit match directly on top of the paper. I had to experiment with adding dry newspaper on damp days for faster burning. I even learned to enjoy standing over a bucket of flaming toilet paper, occasionally stirring it with a stick to allow air to circulate, while being cautious not to inhale the smoke. Afterward, I’d dump the small pile of gray ashes down an abandoned latrine.

Food scraps were another problem that was easily solved. I never have much in terms of leftovers, but there were often banana peels, egg shells, and wet yerba mate (Paraguay’s national drink) that needed disposing of. Paraguayans would usually throw these scraps to their chickens or pigs, but the only livestock I had was a pet dog. Instead, I built a small compost pile out of scrap wood. My compost pile became an obsession: I tended to it almost daily, scooping cow manure onto it, checking for the correct heat, and eventually peeing on it (for the nitrogen) when (I hoped) nobody was watching. Eventually, I was rewarded with rich humus for my garden.

Cardboard, magazines, and plastic could easily be burned, but I worried about the negative effect that would have on the environment. I tried to repurpose those materials into projects for local schools, making bingo cards out of cereal boxes. Magazines were either re-gifted or used to make recycled paper. Sometimes, though, I had to burn other kinds of trash with the toilet paper. I eventually figured out the best way to deal with excess packaging was not to buy the stuff in the first place. I bought food in bulk, or skipped certain items altogether. When I shopped, I didn’t just look at the item I wanted, I also looked at what I’d be stuck with after I finished the goods. I gave up Pringles.

For the most part garbage in Paraguay stays at bay because much of what’s bought there isn’t disposable. Even diapers are a luxury item; most babies wear cloth. It’s not perfect: Sometimes trash is buried or taken to a local dump, which could contaminate Paraguay’s pristine water aquifer, one of the biggest in the world.

Wine bottles remained a bit of a problem. I could only go so far in my no waste zealousness; I wasn’t about to stop drinking cabernet. First, I buried the bottles neck-first into the ground around the perimeter of my garden, which helped prevent weeds and made for better irrigation. After I finished that project, I used an awesome trick I'd learned, cutting wine bottles into drinking glasses using bicycle wire, patience, and caution.

There were still items I didn’t know what to do with, like empty contact lens solution bottles. Luckily, neighborhood kids fought over them. I think they liked the English packaging and the exoticism of contacts in general. I saw one kid fill an old bottle with water and use it to squirt his sister.

Eventually, I became less obsessed with my trash. I found a good system that worked for me and didn’t overly harm the environment. Of course, burning and burying trash can cause damage. There’s no real way around it: The more stuff we produce and buy, the more trash becomes a problem—more and more so as third world countries develop and become Westernized. Hopefully, though, more people will realize that their trash isn’t anonymous and start to come up with creative solutions to fix the problem.

Now I live in New York, where the recycling truck comes by once a week. I no longer have to burn my toilet paper, but I still focus on buying products without packaging. And I still collect food scraps in a bucket in my freezer and bring them to a local urban garden’s compost collection. If they need volunteers to urinate on the compost, I’m their girl.

Join GOOD and IBM for a live tweet chat on Friday, June 1 at 1 p.m. ET (#zerowasteIBM) about the future of recycling and how trash collection can go from "waste management" to "resource recovery." Instead of taking all collected trash straight to landfills, companies like Recology are rethinking how to manage the waste stream. Teaming up with IBM, Reoclogy is working to make San Francisco a zero waste city by using data to tailor recycling management to specific neighborhoods, as well as composting and extracting reusable items before they reach landfills.

As a result of their work in San Francisco, Recology customers reduced the garbage they send to the landfill by 49.7 percent—from 730,000 tons in 2000 to 367,300 tons in 2011. In addition, nearly 1.2 million tons of paper were recycled (the equivalent to 20 million trees), and 135,000 tons of metal were repurposed as well, equaling a savings of 19 million gallons of gas.

Join the conversation with George McGrath, COO of Recology; Lisa Hoyos, Strategic Field Initiatives of BlueGreen Alliance; our own Chris Steinkamp, Head of Partnerships & Strategy at GOOD; and several other panelists who will be fielding questions and talking about how the future of resource recovery can shape our cities.

To participate in a tweet chat on sustainability, follow @SustainableIBM and look for the hashtag #zerowasteIBM on June 1 at 1 p.m. ET.

The photo above is the perfect capper to this month's 30-Day GOOD Challenge to waste less. It depicts what became a sadly common site around the office, a waste basket full of trash both recyclable and non-recyclable. Though a recycling container sat just two feet out of frame, oftentimes it went used far less frequently than it should have been. Though we challenged ourselves to make no more than one paper grocery bag of garbage a week, many of us did not stick to that goal—one staffer who will go unnamed even said he thinks he made more trash than usual this month ("I was getting like four iced coffees a day," he said).

As we noted at this month's halfway point, members of the GOOD community fared pretty well in their pursuit of less waste. They abandoned paper towels, took up cloth diapers, and found resourceful uses for leftover food. Overall, it was inspiring to see, especially considering our own failures.

Chalk it up to the many late-night takeout dinners eaten while working on the new issue of the magazine, or the summer picnic barbecues with drinks in plastic cups; we simply didn't live up to our end of the bargain, and we're actually pretty bummed about it.

Thankfully, not everyone was a trashy slacker. Though he didn't ever quantify his trash, senior editorial designer Dylan Lathrop made a conscious effort to eat at restaurants for lunch rather than ordering food to go throughout the past four weeks. And, as I said I would in our launch video, I used a lot fewer paper towels than normal after washing my hands. Nevertheless, real victories against garbage were few and far between this month. We failed hard.

Thankfully, time keeps rolling on. A new month means a new challenge, the theme of which we'll update you on later today. Our hope for August is that we'll redeem ourselves for July's loss and that you'll join us again to try and change your world and yourself, four weeks at a time.

Anyone who has had the pleasure (or misfortune?) of attending a college frat party has seen the mountains of plastic cups that accumulate by the end of the night. Chances are, they won't end up in the recycling bin. Nor will anybody chastise the frat boys for their epic wastefulness.

Yet researchers at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom have launched a pilot project that's getting student volunteers to acknowledge their excessive garbage—and do something about it. A trial run with the "BinCam"—a trashcan that posts a Facebook pic of each piece of garbage deposited— is proving successful among the four student households participating, according to the BBC. In the second week of their project, which began in May, researchers already observed that far fewer recyclables ended up in the trash.

While the element of public shaming on Facebook is potentially obnoxious or even worse, Big-Brother-style creepy, this project works by keeping participants mindful of their trash, even when it's no longer in their kitchens. "Normally, when you throw something away, the lid goes down and you forget about it," project leader Anje Thieme told the BBC. "But by taking a photograph and uploading it to Facebook, it's a bit like having your conscience sat on your shoulder."

With the snow melted and the city's municipal workers back to performing their regular duties rather than frantically clearing roads, New York City's sanitation department has a tough job ahead of it today—cleaning up all the waste that had been buried under feet-high snow mounds. Here, a scene from Pearl Street in lower Manhattan, where the garbage heaps are apparently as tall as men (also, notice the Christmas tree).

We've all heard the saying that under Mussolini, the trains ran on time. Snopes has since debunked that famous fascism excuse, but what was Il Duce's record on sanitation? It can't be much worse than Berlusconi's. As you can see from these photos, the historic Spanish district in Naples is currently littered with garbage. That means any aspiring Berlusconi apologist or future revisionist historian will need to hone his Photoshop skills in order to cast the country's current right wing leader as a boon to public works.]]>
Fri, 26 Nov 2010 06:30:00 +0000Patrick James
Story of Stuff-like Series for Kids]]>
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The Story of Stuff treatment is applied to garbage, biodiversity, and...frogs. We bet you can't watch without smiling.]]>

You've all seen the stores that pop up all over the country at this time of year. They are filled with plastic masks, vinyl clothes, synthetic-hair wigs, and other disposable items you wear once and then throw out. This year, think outside of the plastic box and create your own Halloween costume using ecologically-friendly materials or previously owned items. Here are a few ideas to get you started, but really, we want to hear from you. Leave your idea in the comments.

1. A divot. Yep, as in the chunk of grass you replace when golfing. This costume involves rolling around in the dirt, wearing neutral clothing, and then affixing a small amount of grass (from your garden or the plant store) to a hat on your head. Bizarre, yes. But charming, and waste-free.

2. Your favorite TV character. Our favorite is above, but that costume is particularly height- and body-type specific. For more versatile ideas, put on some fake glasses, blue jeans, and a button-up and call yourself Liz Lemon. Go Michael Kors in a black blazer, jeans, and black T-shirt. Be Blair Waldorf in a headband and preppy dress. Invoke anyone from Lost in a dirty old pair of jeans or cargos with a ripped T-shirt and some bronzer on your face.

3. Rewear your costume from last year, but be dead this time. If you were Snow White last year, be zombie Snow White this year by adding some blood and tears. If you were a football player, be a dead one on a rampage, etcetera. To achieve the "undead" look easily and affordably, grab a bit of flour or pale mineral makeup to whiten your face. Maybe toss a little in your hair for a grey streak or two. If you have any dark lipstick or black eyeliner around the house, use that on your lips. For fake blood, combine corn syrup with a little red and a little blue food coloring, a drop of milk, and mix.

4. A Nerd. This is especially easy for hipsters. Hike up your pants, tuck in your white button up or plaid shirt, throw a bunch of pens in the shirt pocket, slick your hair back, tape up some thick rimmed glasses, and wear a back pack.

5. Mother Nature. If you don't have a long flowy dress or skirt in your closet, you can easily find one at a thrift store or borrow one from a friend. Think earth tones, blues, and greens. Adorn the skirt with flowers or leaves. You can use glue, safety pins, a needle and thread. Braid your hair and add a head wreath or flowers. You can carry stuffed animals with you, or even glue a fake bird to your shoulder. Get weird!

6. Ahobo. For those who live in colder climates, this is the ultimate in warmth and convenience. Layer on the sweats and worn-in clothes—the messier and dirtier, the better. Smudge a bit of soot from the fireplace or dark eyeshadow on your cheeks and mess up your hair. Grab a stick and tie an old pillow case to the end of it. Toss that over your shoulder and you're done.

7. A Tree. The base of your costume can be a green or brown t-shirt, long sleeved shirt or sweatshirt; green or brown leggings, sweats, or pants; or a green or brown long dress. Then just gather leaves that have fallen and glue or safety-pin them to your clothes. You can use as many or as few as you want.

8. A cavewoman (or man). You can make your own costume after a quick visit to the fabric store or with the help of an old blanket or sheet. Take some soft material and cut a one-sleeved cave woman dress; securing with large safety pins. You can go barefoot and smudge some black make-up on your cheeks.

Tip for cheaters: If you can't bring yourself to make or improvise a costume for yourself, you have another option: Rent one. You shouldn't wait until the last minute to secure yours, so go next week if you can and pick one that you like. Many stores offer fast, easy, and often beautifully made pieces.

BLVR: You, and William Rathje also, see [garbage] as also a cognitive problem.

RN: Well, it’s cognitive in that exact way: that it is quite highly visible, and constant, and invisibilized. So from the perspective of an anthropologist, or a psychologist, or someone trying to understand humanness: What is that thing? What is that mental process where we invisibilize something that’s present all the time?

The other cognitive problem is: Why have we developed, or, rather, why have we found ourselves implicated in a system that not only generates so much trash, but relies upon the accelerating production of waste for its own perpetuation? Why is that OK?

And a third cognitive problem is: Every single thing you see is future trash. Everything. So we are surrounded by ephemera, but we can’t acknowledge that, because it’s kind of scary, because I think ultimately it points to our own temporariness, to thoughts that we’re all going to die.

Some other interesting points: Humans are some of the only animals not attracted to garbage's smells and odors. Modern cities are quite literally built on trash—and trash's role in urban topography can't be overstated. In the past, cities used to stink. Not only that, but they were so full of waste and excrement, that they were hotbeds of disease. Modern sanitation, according to Nagle, is as vital a public service as the work done by police or fire departments. Sanitation workers, therefore, deserve far more prestige and reverence than they currently enjoy.

In most of the country, beach season is fast approaching. (I can practically hear my SoCal colleagues snickering that it never took a break.) So there’s no better time to think about how to make your local shore as clean as nature intended. As Environmental Director of the Save The Waves Coalition, Josh Berry has led his share of beach clean-ups. We caught up with him between sets—well, actually between phone calls and planning meetings for STW’s big annual Life Is a Wave fundraiser on Thursday the 27th in San Francisco—to get advice on how to rally the troops and organize your own beach clean. Turns out, it’s all pretty simple and common sense. “Anyone can do it,” Berry says, and we think everybody with a favorite stretch of sand should.

1. Pick the spot. This is probably as easy as recognizing that your local beach could use a cleanse. It’s worth keeping in mind that the most popular, busy beaches aren’t the only ones that need some TLC. Because of ocean currents and wind patterns, some pretty remote beaches are often fouled with trash from afar, says Berry.

2. Find the time. Weekend early mornings probably work best, as most people will have the day off and you beat the midday heat and the prime-time crowds. But, really, anytime that you can get a good crew will do. Not recommended are the middle of the day on holiday weekends, when you’ll have to navigate a patchwork of busy blankets, beach chairs, and towels. Though days after busy holiday weekends are good times, as hordes of less-than-respectful tourists can certainly leave a trace.

3. Get permission. Berry favors informal, grassroots-style clean up projects. And it’s pretty safe to assume that nobody is going to have a big problem with a bunch of people volunteering to pick up trash. Even so, if the beach in question is under city, state, or National Park Service jurisdiction, it’s probably worth giving the local authorities a call and letting them know your plan. They might even offer some resources and supplies. Oftentimes, they’ll even offer to send a garbage truck to toss the trash straight into.

4. Round up a crew. Call or e-mail a bunch of friends who you know love the beach as much as you do. If your personal network comes up short, post some signs in nearby cafes or surf shops with the date and time and your contact info. It shouldn’t be tough to find a small crew to spend a few hours on the water’s edge. To increase turnout, incentivize! “Personally, I like to dangle a carrot,” Berry says, suggesting that a barbecue and beers (and, um, Pepsi?) on the beach are a nice reward for some hard work.

5. Gear up. The only essential items, according to Berry, are gloves and trash bags. Some folks might bring those fancy trash-stabbing sticks (and some, possibly with more selfish motives, might bring a metal detector), but protective gloves and trash bags are all you really need. We’ll add fresh water to the list to keep everyone happy and hydrated.

6. The clean. Once everyone’s gathered, come up with an informal plan of attack and get after it. Maybe divide the beach into strips. Or maybe you prefer an unchoreographed assault on trash. Don’t leave until there’s nothing left on the beach except the gifts of mother nature. We wouldn’t actually recommend handling potentially dangerous waste like syringes or razors—best to notify the local authorities if you come across those. If you don’t have a garbage truck on site (see number 3), then haul the trash bags off to the nearest public dumpster.

Just like that, you’ve got a clean beach that everyone will appreciate.

British Airways plans to construct a fuel plant that will convert landfill waste into millions of gallons of jet fuel, which could reduce net carbon emissions by 50 percent by 2050. According to a recent article on Treehugger, the airline is working with Solena, a U.S.-based biofuels company, to achieve its ambitious goal. Treehugger writes of the process:

The fuel will be produced by feeding waste into a patented high temperature gasifier, producing BioSynGas which is then converted into jet fuel using the FIscher Tropsch process. As a bonus, the project will reduce methane emissions from landfill and create a by-product of 20 MW electricity per year.

British Airways hopes to put the fuel into operation by 2014 and the process should have the dual benefit of creating hundreds of new jobs. We've heard about quite a few alternative fuel proposals, from algae to chicken parts, but I like the idea that this alternative fuel could potentially curb trash accumulation as well. If successful, similar fuel could be used by other airlines and begin to alleviate our great big garbage problem.Photo (cc) by Flickr user BriYYZ]]>
Fri, 26 Feb 2010 11:00:53 +0000Alicia Capetillohttp://magazine.good.is/posts/baby-steps-to-producing-less-garbage-the-sigg-or-other-waterbottle
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Sigg bottle-one of those aluminum and stainless steel bottles that came out of nowhere and were all of a sudden everywhere last year. Well, I didn't have one, and now I do, and the results for me have been incredible.I drink more water (and in turn less crap). I spend less money on said crappy drinks. I don't need to throw away (or even recycle) the bottles and cans from said crappy drinks I'm no longer consuming.In the first two weeks of the year, I'm guessing I've saved about $25 and 10 bottles/cans/styrofoam cups, just because I have this water bottle to refill. If I keep that up, it's about $650 and 260 containers I'm not spending and trashing this year.It's so stupidly simple, but it's working. The water bottle is now solidly in my phone-wallet-keys check before I head out the door to work in the morning.If you're so swayed, here's the link to buy a Sigg online, or of course, there are other options like U.S.-based Earthlust.

The Sigg in question next to the blog post you're reading. --Next up, I'm working on a solution for removing the daily coffee cup (or iced coffee cup) from my bin. Then we'll see if I can actually figure out a way to make totebags, or something like that, stick with me.]]>
Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:57:54 +0000Casey Caplowehttp://magazine.good.is/posts/e-waste-psa-high-tech-trash
http://magazine.good.is/posts/e-waste-psa-high-tech-trash
If the transition from 386 to 486 resonates loudly in your heart strings, then you have some idea of how far we've come the past fifteen years or so. Of course, the seemingly exponential acceleration of tech improvements presents a fair share of problems--problems that extend beyond your feelings of inadequacy that can't be quelled until you get your hands on the next big thing. Electronic Waste, or E-Waste, is cause for serious environmental concern. Every time someone makes a device run faster, smoother, or more efficiently, a whole line of products becomes obsolete. We, however, hope that once that happens, those items won't become environmental burdens. From GOOD, with love, here's a PSA explaining what you can do to help.]]>
Fri, 20 Apr 2007 05:16:04 +0000Ian Lynam, Patrick James, and Morgan Currie